


No, it's not like that, when magic comes.

by imightkeepyou



Series: Happier Endings AU (Deathless) [1]
Category: Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imightkeepyou/pseuds/imightkeepyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A friend requested a happier endings AU as we were both left unsatisfied by various elements of the book, and this was my attempt to fulfill that request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No, it's not like that, when magic comes.

**I.**

Slumped in the chair at her dressing table, she stared hard at herself, hands cradled in her lap. Another dinner with Koschei where she could say nothing right, do nothing right. The rules were arbitrary—please him, in whatever way he wished to be pleased today. What worked yesterday would not work tomorrow. What was acceptable then, inappropriate now. Her lips ached from his teeth, promises bitten into her in a language she didn't know how to translate.

Yet.

That the world was unfair, tilted, was not new to her. That this world was more unfair than that of her childhood was becoming clear, but she was learning. She was the girl who had looked out the window and saw birds turn into her sisters’ husbands, the girl who chose to see the naked magic of the world. She would learn.

Her reflection stared back at her, expression clouded. When she was a child she had worn pale colors, had waited her turn, watching everything unfold from her window. And she had tried to be good, red scarf tied around her neck, and her classmates had mocked her, turning the comfort into a noose. Koschei’s mouth at her jaw, his teeth at her neck—the images flashed through her mind unbidden, strumming anger and the slow burning of desire from her. Want, but to want what? Him, beautiful, but could he not leave his cruelty, his condescension elsewhere? She did not mind the lectures; she knew that the information would someday be necessary and she would need to call it from her mind, like a book, worn at the seams. Fingers curling into fists, she straightened the curve of her spine, lifted her chin. The angles of her were getting sharp—not like when she had lived in the tall, thin  house of her childhood, but from the chisel of maturity, her cup of life filling to almost  another year. Eighteen years and all the magic in between—she was no longer a child. If she were to wear a noose, it would be by her own choosing.

During the time that St. Petersburg had become Petrograd and she’d had twelve mothers, twelve fathers, they’d all looked at her like she was mad when she’d held her tongue, pacing the floors with bare feet. Now Koschei looked at her like she was silly, a child in a room full of adult conversations, like she didn't know what the words being said meant and could only read tone of voice. She knew—oh, Marya Morevna knew the vocabulary of Koschei’s dominion, braced herself against the meaning of each syllable as they came pouring out of mouths reverent or otherwise. And actions were words too, and things left undone, and intent. They were all weapons, and it was time, she thought, that she learned how to fight.

 

**II.**

The next time Koschei called her into his throne room, his back turned to her as he pored over maps drawn in white gold, she held her chin up, kept her hands folded together behind her back. Like a soldier, she’d told herself before she’d entered the room. When he turned, she could not deny his beauty, nor could she miss the glint of some great terrible thing that passed over his face before his expression settled to distant, reserved. Zvonok’s warning from long ago crept like a whisper through her thoughts.  _He makes himself pretty, so that girls will like him._

"Come." A hand extended outwards, a command dressed up like an invitation. She took a step forwards, Zvonok’s voice not done with her yet.  _But if you must insist on being clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight._

Be clever. Be brave. Another step forward, his hand reaching for her face, thumb tracing over cheekbones, almost tender. He reached for her own hand now, taking it in his and pulling her towards the table, towards the maps. She was presented with a choice: study the maps or play the game of watching him.

It was a decision made in a split second and she took in everything she could of the maps, the shimmering gold of the ink that defined the country of the Tsar of Life, the encroaching silver of Viy, whose lands seemed to grow and grow and grow. Silver borders inched forward before her very eyes and Koschei growled behind her, watching over her shoulder, chin resting at the crook of her neck her. Her thighs pressed against the table and she brought her attention back to Koschei agitated behind her.

"Is there nothing we can do to stop—"

"I am fighting the war as best I can, volchitsa. You—" A pause in his words, his mouth moving to her ear, breath cold, so cold. "You can do nothing." His teeth bit at her shoulder and she sucked in a breath between her teeth, almost a hiss, his fingers clutching at the skin of her waist.  _Be brave._  

Oh, what a girl she was that she trembled at the touch of life! Oh, what a girl Comrade Zvonok had let loose into the world.

Marya’s hands lifted from the table, one skimming over the top of Koschei’s pale hand, the hand grasping at her hips like she was some sort of anchor, and she dug her nails into the delicate skin there; her other hand finding his hair, taking root, lifting his head from her skin, his teeth from her.

Madame Lebedeva’s voice crept into the space where Zvonok’s had been.  _What happens to anything beautiful? Viy ate it up._  While he may have stolen away Buyan, Viy wasn't the only one who ate up beauty. Koschei was so concerned with delicacies and richness, with the consumption of wealth, status, that it was almost a given that he would eat up beauty as well. She could picture it, beauty as a girl, trembling, wrapped into a neat package on a fine plate in front of him, his fork angled just so, mouth open, waiting. And he would complain of how bland it was, demanding sour cherries and black tea instead.

Bitter, bitter, bitter. He’d reprimanded Comrade Stalin’s taste in wine one night, before she’d come into his country, about having the tastes of a spoilt princess. Koschei preferred bitterness instead, equating it with experience.

Whirling on him, she found an amused expression on his face, a brow pulled upwards. Her fingers tugged at his hair again, forcing his head back. She could be cruel. The notion crept along the underside of her thoughts, barely there. The power of this, of her hands on him, his body bending for her; blood roared in her ears and she felt intoxicated, the moment lasting a lifetime. This was living, this was being alive. She could swallow her sweetness, could learn enough that he would drink her instead.

Boredom trickled into Koschei’s eyes like a cup tipping over, patience a virtue he lacked. Excitement kept him young, chased the shadows from his face—Marya knew this, had watched it many times. Leading with her hips, she turned them, pressed him against the table; where the dark wood had dug into her thighs, it hit the backs of his knees, bending him, offering a seat. Grasping his throat, she stared him down in a moment a silence, feeling him swallow under her palm, her nails positioned to dig in, to tear, to make her the little wolfling he said she was.

But was she?  _Volchitsa, medvezhka, koshechka_. Was she an animal? And if so, had she been one all along, or had he fashioned her into something wild, set her into his cruelty like a jewel into a wedding band?

Lunging forward, she kissed him, a laugh bubbling up inside her at the sharp, quick confusion in his eyes. She would keep her sweetness, would corrupt him instead. Her teeth nipped at his lip and he smiled hesitantly, still confused. A child in a crown, a kingdom at his feet. Oh, how she would corrupt him.

 

**III.**

Staring at the man beside her, Marya studied his cheek against the pillows, his dark eyes boring into hers. Where his gaze was usually cold, calculated, she only found exhaustion and a pallid tone to his skin that made her heart seize up like when she’d first seen him at her door; but this was different, this space between them, the soft breaths escaping him warm on her face. She’d seen him tired before, all of the time, the weight of it like hooks in him, pulling his skin off his bones—he’d told her,  _to stave death is not involuntary, like breathing, but a constant tension, like balancing a glass on the head._  This was different because she was afraid for a very different reason.

Maybe, maybe they would grow old and ugly together. If the stories were right, she would take his death from him, and he would no longer be deathless, but if the stories were right, she would also leave him, she would betray him and run away with an Ivan. She thought back to the factory of Yelenas, a shudder rippling up her spine.

"Are you cold, Masha?"

The pet name was unexpected, and her lips parted in surprise. “No. No, I am quite warm.”

His lashes brushed the pillowcase, and they both grew silent again, words pressing against her tongue, worries demanding an audience. “There are stories written about you.”

"There are." A brow quirked upwards, the ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth, and she wondered for a brief moment if Viy had gotten his claws into his brother after all. "There are stories being written about you, now."

Stories. “Lies, maybe. The people here don’t even know what writers are!”

"Lies, then. Good ones, dangerous and fanciful. And beautiful, like you." Koschei rolled onto his back, stretching his arms over his head, more a skeleton than a whole man. His bones pushed violently at the skin stretched over them, like the compliments were a kind of sickness eating him alive. "They will say you have beaten me at my own game, in my own kingdom, my own bed, stolen my death and corrupted me. That you have given the war to Viy, that you are an agent of death."

Marya held her breath, studying his expression, looking for clues in the muscles of his face. He was damnably calm, like her betrayal was inevitable, and she found it brought her near to tears. This was not how she should act. She should comfort him, deny everything. She should demand he cast aside the rumors. She should not be here with tears prickling at the backs of her eyes and an awful aching in her throat. “And would you believe them?”

His body was still, still as death, as he looked to the ceiling, only his eyelashes moving, fluttering every now and then. “I do not know.” He let out a breath, long enough that it seemed he’d been holding it for centuries. “You have changed me, that much is for certain.”

"Then—" she started, unsure whether she should press the issue. Squeezing her eyes shut, she recalled Koschei’s tired face from only moments ago, the soft puffs of air, the warmth; and then him when he first came to collect her, vivid, handsome, but cold, so cold. He had nearly frozen her through and through the first time he had kissed her, hungry, vicious.

Propping herself up on her elbows, she leaned over and kissed him, soft, only a little hungry. “I will change them. The stories. Or lies, or whatever they may end up as. I will make them different.”

This caught his attention and he looked at her, the smile on his lips amused, familiar—she could lose him in a second and pull him back to her just as quick, and the fact of this went into her memory-books, so that the next time she found herself staring at the bones of him and wondering for his health, she’d know how to start a spark in him, a fire in a cold, dark room. Oh, she knew he would make fun of her, knew he would take her words and tear them apart and eat them and her for a late, late supper, but she let them fall from her lips and onto his regardless. “In some other story I would’ve ruined you, I would’ve let you ruin me—”

The laugh was sudden, low and deep, and she felt it rumble around his chest. More than any of that, she could feel it pull at her heart, leaving teeth marks at her throat as if any honesty Koschei could give was as wild as wolves. “That’s my line, devotchka.” He pulled her to him, hands in her wild, dark hair, tugging at tangles and jewels, a thumb smoothing along her jaw. “Who is to say you won’t ruin me still? Wait until your Ivan comes and then see if your promises are so easy to keep. You will not want me or my war. You will want easy living, a handsome man to kiss you and keep you warm, to give him pretty babies with dark hair and wild curiosities. A house full of books, of poetry, a fire always lit.”

A hand left her hair and he tilted her chin down towards him, his eyes lingering on her mouth. “See, Marya Morevna? I did not spirit you away from your home on a whim. I know you. I know you well enough to know that if he offers, you will go. I know that I cannot offer you anything like his promises.”

Marya touched a hand to his cheek, cursing her trembling fingers and the way his eyes closed in return. “It is my decision whether I stay or not, whom I choose.” She pressed her lips lightly to his eyelids, then to his temples. “And I think you keep me warm enough, husband.”

Her thumb pressed against his mouth, a test, and he surprised them both as he kissed the digit, keeping his teeth and their nipping nature to himself. Koschei pulled her to him again, hand on the back of her neck, and when he kissed her, it was with a softness she was not used to, a foreign flavor she would almost call hope.

 

**IV.**

_The older books would tell you this, that the world was young long ago, and in its youth only know of seven things: water, salt, night, birds, the length of an hour, life, and death. That there was a Tsar or Tsaritsa for each of these things, and among them, the Tsar of Life and the Tsar of Death held the most sway. They waged war on each other, tearing at each other so that the world began unraveling, slowly._

_Later another Tsaritsa came, for the world had learned of something else wild enough to be ruled over. This Tsaritsa settled with the Tsar of Life, and initially was thought to be a traitor for she kissed out the cruelty that kept the Tsar’s rule, in return leaving him soft and giving. Many protested, especially the Tsaritsa of Night, concerned for her brother’s domain. Yet the change fostered a new weapon in the Tsar of Life’s army that no one, especially not the Tsar of Death, could have predicted._

_This weapon, the Tsaritsa’s gift, was love._

_The effect it had on the war happened quickly, in the blink of an eye; so fast the world did not know how to keep up with it. And the Tsar of Death slowly began to lose footing, because even in the inevitability of death, life took root and blossomed. Fields once full of dead soldiers fostered good crops, broken hearts mended stronger than before, people longed for the life they could live instead of an end to the one they were in. The Tsar of Life broke his domain from the cage it once was, and in turn, life learned how to live._


End file.
